Most overrated game of the generation?

[El Babua]

Speaking of game media, I love how Sessler pretty much made the big three releases this year (BI, TLOU, GTA) out to be some great artistic achievements in human culture in his reviews.

Love the guy and his style, but buddy needs to chill on the hyperbole.

[Raban]

games media people have to do their part in desperately clinging to this sinking industry too, y'know

[Rahxephon91]

It couldn't  just be that these are just really good games. No, that couldn't be it.

[Tasty]

"could'nt"?

[cool breeze]

I'll make this the last time I mention it as I've gone on about these two titles more than enough for the year.

The thing that happened with both The Last of Us and Bioshock infinite is a strong media desire to reward campaign games where story matters versus games like Call of Duty where the story doesn't matter. The problem is they overly bent over backwards in both cases without really looking at any of the gameplay flaws of either title (and in some cases the story flaws)

Both good games at least for me. Glad I played both of them. I enjoyed both of them. Just not the wholly amazing greatest of all time experiences they were made out to be.

It's not just the games press.  Walking Dead and Journey 'won' both games press and enthusiasts last year.  These people value something in games I don't.  That's fine.  I do end up feeling out of touch when I play a game like Last of Us or Bioshock Infinite, enjoy them, but come out without strong feelings one way or the other.  That's fine too.  It's just, when I think about my favorite moments in games, it's never a cutscene.

[Rahxephon91]

Nier. I fucking hate this game. No, changing to other terribly excited genres away from your boring combat does not make for good game. No, you are not subtle that Nier is actually a monster and it isn't intersting anyway. No, Kaine is just a bitch. It was a terrible game that people liked to wank too much about.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Nier. I fucking hate this game. No, changing to other terribly excited genres away from your boring combat does not make for good game. No, you are not subtle that Nier is actually a monster and it isn't intersting anyway. No, Kaine is just a bitch. It was a terrible game that people liked to wank too much about.

for Nier to be overrated other people would have had to have actually played it

[Rufus]

Nier. I fucking hate this game. No, changing to other terribly excited genres away from your boring combat does not make for good game. No, you are not subtle that Nier is actually a monster and it isn't intersting anyway. No, Kaine is just a bitch. It was a terrible game that people liked to wank too much about.

for Nier to be overrated other people would have had to have actually played it

So true. Sadness :'(

[Rahxephon91]

I guess, but the game seems highly loved and rated in the small jrpg community which is what I'm speaking to. I mean its not like this thread hasn't mentioned small games like SMT4 and even Dark Soulls which are nothing compared to Bioshock.

The only reason I bought the game was because it got a lot of hype and praise from that small group. So when I didn't like it I could only think it was overated.

Are you saying you can't call a Cult Hit overated? I think you can, it just has to be something that has a lot of praise by its audience, which Nier does. Those that haven't played it dont care or think its supposedly a good game because it has a postive legacy.

[chronovore]

LA Noire actually felt pretty disappointing to me, since I expected so much from an experimental rockstar title. They go through all this effort with the face tech and making the city look really realistic but the story wasn't exactly spellbinding and the investigation gameplay was both too simple and repetitive.

Oh, yeah, LA Noire. Definitely a disappointment. The only Rockstar-published game I've bought and not finished. I would pay a lot of money for a game which used that lovely world, and actually had some gameplay. As it was, Rockstar managed to take a point-and-click adventure a la Police Quest and turn it into a difficult to control mess through middleware which makes the character lean, and turns movement to be momentum based. Trying to find clues was such a chore in finding the sweet spot to actually interact with objects. Then the interrogation inconsistency destroys anything else which might have been fun about it.

No, thanks.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

LA Noire actually felt pretty disappointing to me, since I expected so much from an experimental rockstar title. They go through all this effort with the face tech and making the city look really realistic but the story wasn't exactly spellbinding and the investigation gameplay was both too simple and repetitive.

Oh, yeah, LA Noire. Definitely a disappointment. The only Rockstar-published game I've bought and not finished. I would pay a lot of money for a game which used that lovely world, and actually had some gameplay. As it was, Rockstar managed to take a point-and-click adventure a la Police Quest and turn it into a difficult to control mess through middleware which makes the character lean, and turns movement to be momentum based. Trying to find clues was such a chore in finding the sweet spot to actually interact with objects. Then the interrogation inconsistency destroys anything else which might have been fun about it.

No, thanks.

why does Rockstar always put Euphoria physics on their protagonists?!

[chronovore]

:it_is_a_mystery.gif

It truly can lead to impressive animations for NPCs; I get that, I like that, most of the time, but Nico and the other GTA IV-era protagonists are akin to piloting a boat. Everything is so swimmy. RDR's Marston is significantly better, but I suspect it is because they turned Euphoria influence down substantially. GTA V is reasonably comfortable, but I'll have to load up RDR to see if V's actually beaten it.

There are a number of games with very fluid protagonist animation, even those with progressively generated animations. Look at Tomb Raider; Lara's amazing, no two ways about it.

[Cerveza mas fina]

I would have suffered through LA Noire if the interrogations were good. Game had so much potential I can't imagine how Rockstar let them publish it with how the interrogations worked.

Someone early on must have said it just doesn't work, unless they all lived in a bubble.

[chronovore]

I think they were in a bubble for a long time, and then it was too late to change things. Or maybe the gameplay which had been decided was actually worse and less consistent, but this was the least damaging alternative gameplay.

The big problem with the game was the sheer amount and type of data needed to construct the scenes in which the characters are acting. The full body and facial capture stuff must have been crazy, and once the data was there, it's immutable. There's no way to get the actor to read a line over the phone for a correction, or use the logitech mic on their computer, or even drop by a local recording studio to have them do pickups -- none of the standard Hail Mary plays work with the kind of data they needed to show a character doing their thing.

So they likely had all that performance data, and it was not going to change, but they had to figure out how to "fix" the gameplay around the writing. It's a bad situation to be in.

Seriously, the way they used the touted performances in those sequences, you can't even change the viewing angle, other than to look up and down. The whole thing might as well have been FMV, for all the good their problematic technology gave them.

[Cerveza mas fina]

The "tells" where horrible. People's eyes would look around as if they were lying even when they were telling the truth etc.

It's one of those games where my gf watched along and she didn't get anything either in those sequences. Really a shame cause obviously a lot of work went into it.

[Rufus]

I read somewhere that the prompts had different names originally and were changed to make them more opaque.

[Joe Molotov]

I read somewhere that the prompts had different names originally and were changed to make them more opaque.

Well, mission accomplished!

[pancakesandsex]

Nier. I fucking hate this game. No, changing to other terribly excited genres away from your boring combat does not make for good game. No, you are not subtle that Nier is actually a monster and it isn't intersting anyway. No, Kaine is just a bitch. It was a terrible game that people liked to wank too much about.

It sounds to me like you can't see the forest for the trees.

The combat was serviceable IMO.  I had no difficulty in controlling it or getting it to do what I wanted.  The genre nods were cute, but that's about it.  I enjoyed the crazy magic spam, it had a unique visual flair to it.

You're right about one of the main narrative pushes in the game being unsubtle, but it wasn't trying to be.  The subtlety in the game is in it's bleakness.  It only becomes apparent if pay attention when you complete the (sometimes rather fetchy) sidequests, pay attention to npc chatter, and consider the non-immediate ramifications of your actions within the context of the game world.  That combined with the cyclical storytelling and a rather ballsy final ending that quite literally undoes your character's existence, left quite an impression on me, and THAT is why I hold it in such high regard. 

I'm usually a mechanics oriented person, and while I enjoy a good yarn, and a setting plot might draw me in, mechanics, systems, sub-systems are what keep me coming back (or in some cases, keep me away).  Nier managed to transcend that and turn something quirky but average into something very special.

[Rufus]

I wish I could find the article or whatever. It may have been an offhand remark on a podcast, too. I think "doubt" was supposed to be "accuse", for instance. Seemed to fit more when I was playing it, so I could see it being true.

There we go:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-15-l-a-forensic-brendan-mcnamara-on-l-a-noire-interview

Eurogamer: You captured actor performances using Coax, Force and Accuse dialogue options, but then changed the name of the options afterwards. Why?

Brendan McNamara: What we wanted at the start, it was more your strategy. As a detective, what strategy are you going to choose? Are you going to coax an answer out of them, or are you going to jump in there and try and force an answer out of them - or do you just suddenly accuse them of lying straight up?

We tested that round and round the organisation and people never really liked the words or got the words. But that was the way it was written. Then we switched to Truth, Doubt, Lie, because that was more straightforward for people. But it made Doubt weird.

Eurogamer: So that was switched after it had all been captured? So you couldn't go back and change the dialogue more fitting?

Brendan McNamara: No. Truth and Lie are pretty straightforward, right? But Doubt... what it changed it from was what your strategy was into what was the person's performance like? I don't think it made it bad, it just made Aaron appear slightly psycho on the Doubt button. That's my fault, not his. When people go, he turns into a maniac when you press Doubt, that's my fault, not his.

[chronovore]

I wish I could find the article or whatever. It may have been an offhand remark on a podcast, too. I think "doubt" was supposed to be "accuse", for instance. Seemed to fit more when I was playing it, so I could see it being true.

There we go:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-15-l-a-forensic-brendan-mcnamara-on-l-a-noire-interview

Eurogamer: You captured actor performances using Coax, Force and Accuse dialogue options, but then changed the name of the options afterwards. Why?

Brendan McNamara: What we wanted at the start, it was more your strategy. As a detective, what strategy are you going to choose? Are you going to coax an answer out of them, or are you going to jump in there and try and force an answer out of them - or do you just suddenly accuse them of lying straight up?

We tested that round and round the organisation and people never really liked the words or got the words. But that was the way it was written. Then we switched to Truth, Doubt, Lie, because that was more straightforward for people. But it made Doubt weird.

Eurogamer: So that was switched after it had all been captured? So you couldn't go back and change the dialogue more fitting?

Brendan McNamara: No. Truth and Lie are pretty straightforward, right? But Doubt... what it changed it from was what your strategy was into what was the person's performance like? I don't think it made it bad, it just made Aaron appear slightly psycho on the Doubt button. That's my fault, not his. When people go, he turns into a maniac when you press Doubt, that's my fault, not his.

Yeah, thanks for that. I've been wondering about that for ages.

It really does reek of a fundamental change, and there it is.

And, again, I don't think those were "poker tells" so much as just default facial loop animations running based on current progress, not what had just been said immediately prior, IIRC. So it was strange to have them appear so nervous or guilty or uncomfortable, only to have them suddenly gain confidence and say, "This interview is over!" -- Thanks, no, Dick Tracy -- I'm the one playing detective, so sit your ass back down.

Driving was similarly un-fun in that game. Every car was a clunker of an old boat, no acceleration, bouncy suspension... it was realistic, but just no damned fun to drive. I made my partner drive most of the time. Then when I had to drive for a mission, I couldn't stand it, and wasn't good at it.

Has McNamara been allowed to work on anything else since this?

[Raban]

Oh yes, they've already been able to produce this

[Rufus]

There's his "Whore of the Orient" thing, but I don't know what stage that's at.

edit: Well look at that. Just goes to show how out of the loop I am. The setting is interesting at least.

[Powerslave]

Uncharted